High Strangeness Happens Here…

The Weird Tale of Clara Coffin

Clara Josephine Coffin of East Orange, New Jersey had been agitated all day, her mother said. So when the 17-year-old daughter of Edward W. Coffin, an executive with Standard Oil and securities trader said she was going to a friend’s house to study, Mrs. Coffin told her that she should. It might help lighten her spirits. So Clara left her home at 55 Burnett Street to head to the home of Jessie Houston, a neighbor. But when Clara failed to return home that evening, Mr. and Mrs. Coffin spoke to Jessie Houston – Clara had not gone there, and in fact, she hadn’t seen her since earlier that afternoon.

This picture of 17-year-old Clara Coffin accompanied the initial report of her disappearance on November 4, 1903 (New York World).

The police began an investigation, discovering that Clara took $12 with her when she left (approximately $250 in 2016). Speaking further with Houston, they determined that Clara was in all respects a quite lackadaisical student with average grades, excelling in no particular subject with no boyfriend and mildly athletic. She was considered somewhat of “a plodder” by her teachers at East Orange High School. She was in her senior year at East Orange and was hoping to attend Bryn Mawr, where her sister was a student, but other than that had no real ambitions.

No real progress was made, however for a few days. Clara seemed a very average student, no ransom demands were made, and no leads presented themselves. On November 7, Joseph Crowe, postmaster of Omaha, Nebraska, contacted Mr. Coffin. Crowe, the husband of Clara’s cousin Hazel, said that Clara had appeared at their home. The two cousins had met at a family function in Newcastle, Indiana in 1902 and had since corresponded. The possibility that Clara had run off to stay with the Crowes had occurred to the Coffins but was deemed unlikely since they didn’t think she had enough money.

So the story seems an open-and-shut case of a senior who got cold feet about their future and ran away to decompress and relax. But such was not to be.

For the past month, Clara claimed, she had seen a mysterious woman loitering around the high school. On November 3, she was approached by this woman, who had “piercing black eyes,” and was mesmerized. Under the influence of hypnosis, she went home, packed clothing and money, and left to meet the mysterious woman at a prearranged place. When she got there, the woman was in the company of a mysterious man. Clara and these two took a journey to Newark, New Jersey, and thence to New York City. From New York they boarded a train bound for Chicago. Where they were bound for after that Clara didn’t know, but somewhere around Cedar Rapids, Iowa she broke from her hypnotic spell and escaped the train. She telegrammed Joseph Crowe, and he took her to his home, where she was bedridden in a state of “nervous prostration.”

Her friends from East Orange and her family doubted the story. A maid at the Coffins’ home was quoted by the New York World as having said that, in her opinion, “Clara just got tired and went away.” She also disputed the claim that Clara had only $12 with her. “To tell the truth, Mrs. Coffin doesn’t know how much money Clara took. There’s always money lying around the house.” But the Coffins never got to really question Clara about the “woman with awful eyes,” since, as her father said, “whenever the subject was broached it affected my daughter and injured her condition.”

After this, however, the story vanishes from the press and I’m not certain whether there was ever any real conclusion. Was Clara indeed making her cross-country journey under the influence of some “woman with awful eyes”? Or was she merely another teenager who ran away from home to escape the stresses of her life?

Update (2/16/2017): In 1910, Clara was engaged to Dr. Selskar M. Gunn, an English microbiologist and later employee of the Rockefeller Foundation. The two married in 1911.

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Published by adgable

From Lancaster County, PA, home of the Amish, potholes, and horse manure. I've been reading, writing, and researching Fortean topics for... a long time, let's just leave it at that.
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4 thoughts on “The Weird Tale of Clara Coffin”

Maybe she was in some sort of transient/temporary psychotic episode and was experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations and responding with this behaviour? This episode may have ‘worn off’ and could be due to a fever, drug use (Laudanum was widely available in this era, and used therapeutically for physical ailments, but of course people did become dependant on this Opiate) or some trauma received or perceived by her? There was no real knowledge of Schizophrenic type illness back then, and certainly no treatment other than more Opiates for sedation! I may be of course totally off course with this opinion, but of course we’ll never really know. Great read. Thanks Dan (UK)

A schizophrenic episode has been suggested by others when I posted this on Facebook as well. In fact, one of the posters provided an anecdote of a woman who had a schizophrenic break and was compelled to undertake a long journey, which I thought sounded remarkably similar to this story. The “nervous prostration” afterward could be the depressive state which often follows some sort of manic episode, I suppose.

Thanks for the reply. I am a former mental health nurse. This type of behavior wouldn’t be unusual for psychotic person today and I’m sure it was the same in the early twentieth century. We also have the option of abtuosychotic drugs, which wasn’t an option for this young girl. I’d say she never spoke of it afterwards would be due to embarrassment and shame.